


Underworld

by syrupwit



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archaeology, Claustrophobia, Horror, Malta, Minor Violence, Other, one scene of heavy drinking, paranormal horror, references to unspecified past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25076491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/pseuds/syrupwit
Summary: Nine months after her experience on the London Underground, Karolina Górka takes a late holiday to confront what she believes to be a persistent stalker. (Alternately: The Buried courts, and tests, its latest avatar.)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Underworld

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vachtar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vachtar/gifts).



> vachtar, I really liked writing for your request! I hope the result is enjoyable.
> 
> Thanks to malatruse for beta services and "Snoost" for title consultation.

The flight arrived in Luqa, Malta around 10:30 in the morning. They taxied for a long time, given the scarce traffic, and circled the tarmac in a circuitous path whose purpose was not immediately apparent. It was early October. Though the sky was overcast and the airfield damp from recent showers, spots of blue were wearing through the clouds. It promised to be a beautiful day.

Karolina Górka was too groggy to enjoy it. She had slept far too deeply. For months, her nights had been haunted by the same recurring dream, but she’d napped straight through the three-hour journey from Gatwick. Her head hurt and her hearing was still muffled from the descent. While the plane made one last pass, she retrieved her handbag from under the seat and located a packet of chewing gum, dislodging a light trickle of dirt in the process. Really, just her luck; the rest of the plane was clean.

As she brushed the dust from her legs and chewed, ears popping, they finally reached the gate. The plane came to a halt, and the seatbelt symbol blinked off. Around the cabin, the other travelers rose from their seats, stretched, and started getting down their luggage. She stayed in her seat until the captain announced they were permitted to disembark, and only then fetched her backpack from the overhead compartment, patting down her jeans afterwards to check that the letter was still in her hip pocket. She was the last passenger off the plane.

Karolina proceeded to the terminal, exchanging yawns with the officer who checked her passport and the people around her in the queue. The airport was quiet, almost deserted save for employees and a handful of off-duty pilots and flight attendants. She tried to stay alert, scanning the area for anything or anyone suspicious, as she headed to the food court.

It was her habit to buy a big, greasy breakfast sandwich on the first day of a holiday, no matter what time she arrived at her destination. Though she was nervous, she ate easily, washing down bites of egg, cheese, and bread with sips from a large black coffee. Karolina had always had a strong stomach. Among her friends, when she’d still been in contact with them, she was renowned for eating the same hearty breakfasts regardless of her alcohol intake the night before.

She spent a while scrolling through bus schedules on her phone, considering her next move. She had to be in the capital city of Valletta by 2:30, but aside from that, the day was free. It had been a while since she’d traveled, and she typically preferred cold-weather destinations; she wasn’t sure what to do. Stick to public places, likely. Somewhere open and fresh and bright. Somewhere she could be seen, where she wouldn’t just disappear.

For a moment nausea overwhelmed her, paired with that sinking, almost homesick feeling that tended to follow birthday parties and the aftermath of a bad hangover. She swallowed back acid and focused on counting her breaths. Slow and shallow, in and out. She was fine. She could handle this. Once she was done here, she’d never have to think about it again.

She checked the lining of her bag, feeling the shape of the knife hidden there, and continued to breathe deliberately as she relaxed her shoulders. Then she straightened up, finished her coffee, and headed for the bus station.

* * *

Since adolescence, or perhaps even since childhood, Karolina had been told that her emotional reactions were strange. Too understated. Too practical. Muffled, like there was a layer of something between her and the rest of the world, separating her from common experience as much as it protected her.

The truth was, she felt things just as deeply as anyone else, but from a distance. It was like her feelings happened to a different person. There were many potential explanations for this—the unpleasant yet entirely mundane events leading to the establishment of her personal New Year’s celebration comprised one such example—but Karolina preferred not to dwell on them. She felt that some matters were best left undisturbed.

Unfortunately, someone else seemed to disagree. That was why she was here.

* * *

She took the bus to Floriana, where she spent an hour walking past successively more dramatic churches. The day was lovely now, the air balmy and the sky mostly clear. Palm trees shaded long walkways, and sand-colored walls rose only a little above plazas that appeared paved from the same quarry.

Her brain was finally getting the memo that she was in another country. After a week of drizzle in London and a gloomy early morning cab ride, the mild island climate felt a tad fantastical. At any moment, she would surely wake up in her dreary flat in Seven Sisters: the cracked ceiling, gray light slanting between heavy curtains, her duvet topped as always with a layer of fine dust…

Karolina hung a left and walked to Valletta by accident. She wandered along the waterfront and picked her way through narrow streets. She saw gardens, statues, fountains, a variety of official-looking buildings. Cacti, oleander, a shock of red geraniums. The other pedestrians neither bothered nor avoided her, leaving her free to take in the city atmosphere. If not for the sense of menace pressing at the back of her neck, she would have started to enjoy herself.

Eventually she found the central square and consulted a map there. Her destination, it turned out, was just a block away. It was already a quarter past two, so she found a cafe to rest at, and charged her phone while she drank what felt like a portentous iced tea. There wasn’t anything unusual about it, not even cinnamon or frozen berries or something; it just felt portentous.

She spent too long in the restroom, fixing her hair in the mirror and squashing down morbid thoughts. The knife felt awkward, stashed inside her bra, and it hurt to inhale. She was already fed up with her own fear. The letter, she double-checked, was still in her pocket. Someone knocked on the door—politely, then not politely. She was too distracted to get annoyed with the glance they gave her on her way out.

* * *

Karolina checked in at the reception desk of the National Library at precisely 2:50 PM. The attendant evaluated her passport and letter of reference without comment, pausing a moment too long before he produced the requested researcher’s pass. She was sent to an adjoining room, where her bag and backpack were shoved into a locker that just held them, and then she was set loose in the library.

Three o’clock in the afternoon is not an invigorating hour in any place of learning, especially not a large, old building full of rare books. Lethargy absorbed the few scholars in evidence. An older woman appeared to have fallen asleep at her microfiche viewing station. Karolina evaluated the other patrons with a tensed jaw, twisting her hands together as she walked. None of them gave her that tight, crushed feeling, the sick certainty of being trapped. But it was not far off. She knew it was coming. The only question was when.

The work she sought was a relatively young book on Maltese geology. The librarian she spoke with seemed rather baffled about it—Karolina’s reference letter, wrung from a former professor she hadn’t contacted in half a decade, identified her as a student of business psychology—but fetched it for her regardless. It was in decent shape, only a little worn, and oddly bulging, perhaps from water damage. Karolina took her book, found a seat in the reading area, and waited.

Three-fifteen came and went. The library’s shroud of silence began to feel heavy and oppressive. Karolina flipped through the book and pretended to read. There were some attractive illustrations of rock formations, caves and islets and so on. She skimmed a passage on sinkholes, relating the legend of a village that had fallen into one in the fourteenth century AD. An earthquake, a storm, or an act of god? All three, perhaps. The villagers had lived wickedly, ignoring the warnings of a virtuous local woman who advised them of god’s wrath. They had been swallowed—tipped over, vanished into the earth—and only this one good woman had escaped. Two chapels stood on the site now, already centuries old at the time of composition. The sinkhole was known as the Maqluba, “Overturned” or “Upside-Down.” (This was also the name of a popular rice dish.) The author segued into a tangent about karst topography.

Sweat dripped down Karolina’s legs, tickling the backs of her knees. Her hand spasmed around the blunt little pencil that the librarian had given her for note-taking. She was conscious of a ticking clock and the anxious foulness of her own breath. Only the knife, lodged warm and hard against her breastbone, kept her centered.

By 3:30, she grew uncomfortable. She took the letter from her pocket and re-read it for the hundredth time. Even crumpled and worn from repeated folding, it said the same thing it had said for the past week:

> _Come to Malta to put this affair to rest._

Then the address of the National Library in Valletta; a date and time (Friday, October 5, 2017 at 3:00 PM); and the title of the book. The letter was on Eberhart & Strauss letterhead, just like every unusual piece of mail she’d received in the last nine months.

At first it had just been junk mail. Offers to refinance her remaining student loan debt, that kind of thing. She typically tore up the letters without looking at them, but one day she had read some scraps of text by accident and been unnerved by the details they disclosed. Another letter had arrived a few days later with even more frighteningly specific information, most of it not even about her student loan debt. The volume of correspondence had increased until she was getting a half-dozen letters per day.

Karolina had dealt with stalkers before. Had dealt with worse things, even (cf. the New Year’s incident). But something about this situation felt different. Perhaps that was why she never thought to inform the authorities. It wasn’t just that the letters arrived gritty with the same dust that coated every surface in her flat. Her nightmares were becoming longer and more vivid, her sleep increasingly difficult to differentiate from waking hours. She found it hard to concentrate at work and left in the middle of outings with friends. She lost time. The letters were at the center of it all somehow, the swirling mass of coincidences converging on her from above.

She’d researched Eberhart & Strauss online and found an address in Hammersmith, belonging to a building that had been demolished in 2015. Sufficient evidence existed to establish them as a financial firm, but there were no associated websites or social media pages in operation. She had tried repeatedly to contact them by email and phone, even by fax at one point, but the letters kept coming. Finally, about three weeks ago, she had written them back. She hadn’t included her return address, only a quick note and a signature. After that, the letters had stopped.

Well. The letters had stopped, for a time. Then this final letter had come, and here she was. Waiting. It was 3:45 now, and no one had shown.

Suddenly a voice broke the silence. Karolina’s head whipped around so fast it hurt. But it was just some loud American girl lecturing the librarian about something. Karolina caught the word “siege” a few times. The girl didn’t seem to notice the looks she was getting or how the librarian leaned away as she spoke. Not purposefully rude, just clueless. She had round, untrendy little glasses and a limp ponytail of dark hair, and her voice held the cant of an over-intelligent young person trying desperately to sound sophisticated. Karolina turned back to read about Maltese caves.

Four o’clock, and still nothing. She needed to obtain lodging for the night. Karolina got up to return the book, interrupting the American girl in her now-whispered monologue to the librarian. (The woman was at her desk, typing pointedly, but the girl hadn’t gotten the message.) Karolina prepared to leave, feeling bizarrely disappointed. Annoyed, but disappointed.

“Hey, wait! Is this yours?” The American girl, suddenly at her elbow, held up an envelope.

“What?” Karolina took it, hearing dust sift inside. The envelope had her name written across it in a familiar hand.

“You left it in your book,” said the girl. “Be more careful with your things.”

“Mm,” said Karolina, but the girl was already headed back to her unwilling audience. She opened the envelope, heart beating fast, and drew out a dusty event ticket and a note on Eberhart & Strauss letterhead:

> _Check the last step._

The ticket was for a tour at the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum in nearby Paola, scheduled to take place the following day. Karolina had never heard of the place, but there were tourist brochures in the library lobby. The Hypogeum, literal Greek for “underground,” was a subterranean burial complex with religious or ceremonial functions. It was very old; the oldest remains discovered there dated back to 4000 BC.

She took a few additional pamphlets, just to read. There was one about the catacombs and tunnels of Malta, which—local legend held—extended throughout the archipelago (Malta; Gozo; the tiny waypost of Comino with its lonely tower; probably some islets as well). According to rumor or perhaps tradition, these underground passageways in Malta led all the way to Rome. 

Karolina lingered over photos: huge stones piled into archways, a catacomb carved with spiral decorations, an illuminated chamber named as the “Holy of Holies.” Something stirred, tugging at her gut. A memory? An intuition? Then she saw that it was 4:30 already, and she hadn’t eaten lunch.

* * *

After dinner, Karolina booked a room at a cheap bed and breakfast that turned out to be a hassle to reach. She was exhausted by the time she finally got there, nearly falling into bed fully clothed. Only stubbornness kept her upright long enough to shower, change, and turn off the lights.

She dreamed that she was underground, scraping at the wall of a narrow stone passage with an implement of light bone. She wasn’t supposed to dig so far, but she couldn’t help it. She had to go farther, deeper, until she could no longer feel the horrible air and sunlight at her back—until she was encased in earth, totally surrounded, snug inside the crushing thing that loved her.

Above, she could hear a person wailing, a rhythmic animal sound that reverberated through the scant space. It rose and became hideously loud, close and overpowering. Karolina cried out in response, but it wasn’t her voice. And then the world shifted, and the passage collapsed—

She woke up on a shout. She was alone in her room at the bed and breakfast. Trailing her hand over the bedspread, she found a layer of dust, as anticipated. Unexpectedly mixed in were bits of gravel, around the size of a pea at the largest. When she rolled them between her fingers, they crumbled into dirty smears.

* * *

The entrance to the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum was right off a normal city street, which didn’t seem appropriate. Karolina had drunk a lot of coffee to offset her troubled night, but she was still half-asleep by the time she joined the rest of her scheduled tour group. Apparently they were running late that morning. This was unusual. The Hypogeum had a climate-controlled environment and visitors were limited. Tickets, Karolina discovered, were usually booked months in advance.

“Are you stalking me or something?” It was the American girl from the library, at her elbow again.

Karolina gave her a look, and she laughed awkwardly.

“Sorry, bad joke. What’s your name again? Camilla?”

“Have you been here before?” said Karolina, instead of answering.

“Nope, first time. I’m more interested in military history, personally, but everyone online was talking about this place so I figured I’d add it to the list.” The girl held out her hand. “I’m Janet. Hope we actually get in today, right?”

Once introduced, Janet needed little inducement to keep talking. Karolina nodded and _hmm’d_ her way through explanations of Janet’s itinerary, her expected course of university study in the spring, and her interest in medieval weaponry stemming from a live-action roleplay hobby. Normally Karolina would just turn and leave a conversation like this, but she was too tired and out of it to object. And it comforted her, even as it irritated her, to gain distraction from the chatter of someone unaffected by the terror that dogged her.

Janet was demonstrating the difference between two types of axes, whose names Karolina would not have remembered even if she’d been paying attention, when the announcement came through that their tour was ready to commence.

“I hope we at least get some skeletons out of this,” said Janet, flashing her a conspiratorial smile.

Karolina had never been an especially bloodthirsty student of history, but she found she was hoping the same.

* * *

They took an elevator down to the top level of the Hypogeum. The structure had three main levels. Though the top level now lay underground, it had likely once been open to the air or marked with a shrine. Burial chambers flanked a large room, with a doorway leading down to the second level. While the group murmured and stifled yawns, the tour guide informed them that the entire structure held the remains of an estimated 7,000 people.

The Hypogeum had lain hidden for thousands of years before it was rediscovered during construction work in 1902. The workers had tried to cover it up at first, but the site was excavated over the following decade and again in the early 1990s. It had been open to the public on and off since 1908, with significant closures for conservation and study. Countless visitors had walked here, and countless more might come.

The tour descended to the second level. Railed walkways led down twisting paths, bright lights on sandy stone. The Hypogeum had been carved from the living rock: soft limestone, composed of the chalky shells of dead plankton and polished to appealing smoothness. The air smelled stranger the deeper they went, likely due to the humidity and climate control. Somehow it was easy for Karolina to orient herself to the entrance—she always knew where her back was facing.

She didn’t relax, but she began to enjoy her surroundings: the elegant lintelled doorways, curving arches and corbelled roofs, occasional paintings of honeycombs or spirals. The mood among her group was impressed, though not over-serious, and their guide was clearly enjoying himself.

As they progressed through labyrinthine rounded chambers—Janet sticking to the front, where she could question the guide more easily—Karolina found herself falling behind. It wasn’t deliberate or all at once, but there came a moment when she stood alone in a small room. Though the sounds of her tour group came from somewhere nearby, she couldn’t tell where, and she no longer knew which direction she faced.

Fear bit her heart. She took a slow breath, forcing her mind calm and blank. There were two ways out of the room, neither of them familiar. She reminded herself that she was unlikely to get truly lost here. In the worst case scenario, the next tour group would find her, and she would be kept only an hour or so longer than planned.

She ventured down one passage, then backtracked when she heard voices on the other side. She tried the other passage and heard voices on the side she’d just come from. It happened a third time—“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said aloud—and she decided to keep going anyway. It was possible that both passages led to the same place.

The passage was long, and it narrowed as it went on. The ceiling seemed to lower, making her hunch in anticipation. The walls weren’t as smooth or curving as the ones before. Rather, they were rough and jagged, squeezing to a point. Karolina continued until she had to turn sideways to keep going. It occurred to her that she wasn’t in the Hypogeum anymore.

She stopped, summoning the well of blank peace she had drawn on before, and considered her next move. If she struggled, the walls would close in tighter. If she ventured further down the passage, she might not be able to leave. But could she go back the way she’d come?

In the distance, she heard someone call out, faint but echoing. She closed her eyes and measured three slow breaths, feeling the scrape of ragged stone behind her back. The limestone against her bare forearm felt warm and slightly moist, like the hide of a large, feverish beast. It labored in time with her, but it could not breathe. 

She felt that heaviness on the nape of her neck again. Pressure, as of a hand.

“What do you want from me?” she asked. There was no answer.

She looked to her side, half expecting to find a missive from Eberhart & Strauss sticking out of the wall, and saw that the way forward was wider than it had looked. There was a room beyond it, and she could make out a doorway in the distance.

Karolina fit through the gap and moved on.

She caught up to the group in a side chamber, where they were testing out vocalizations. No one appeared to have registered her absence. There was a resonance niche cut in the rock—the Oracle Room, it was called—and people could throw their voices there in unusual ways. Janet was particularly thrilled about it. She tried to lead them in a chant, but grew overexcited, and the tour guide had to tell her to stop.

Painted spirals clustered on the walls in an adjoining room, near the millennia-old impression of a six-fingered human hand. Karolina wondered whose hand it was, if it had belonged to any one person, and how many visitors or researchers had tried to fit their own in the shape. She felt that pressure ghost the back of her neck again, but only for a second.

A richly carved doorway, before which lay two connected holes once used for offerings, led to the Holy of Holies. It was thought that light from the surface had shone there at the midwinter solstice, directed through the tunnels from the entrance and framed through three stone portholes. The architecture in this room mimicked that found at temples above ground. The tableau was indisputably stirring.

Their stint in the second level concluded, the group proceeded to the final, deepest level, ten meters below ground. Here, five cramped chambers held more burial areas, perhaps expanded by the Neolithic peoples from naturally occurring caves. It was a somber, intimate place, and very strange, marked with elaborate doorways and a staircase from the middle level that cut off in midair.

Karolina remembered the words from the note. She checked the last stair. Sure enough, there was a niche in the side, and within it, an envelope addressed to her by name. Dust poured from the envelope when she opened it, and then a small, light object: a bone. She didn’t know much about bones, but somehow she knew it was human. It looked like a finger bone. There was no note inside, just more dust and a tiny, pale spider, which leapt out and scuttled away almost before she saw it.

She placed the bone back in the envelope and tucked it into her pocket. Someone was calling for them to go.

* * *

After the tour, Janet invited herself out to dinner with Karolina. Karolina didn’t realize it until their drinks arrived. She had, for some reason, been expecting Janet to leave the table.

Karolina hadn’t dined with company in a while. It had been months since her last uneasy working lunch with a colleague, and months more since she'd parted ways with her old housemates, the dirt and her odd sleeping schedule having finally driven them out. She found that she didn’t miss it.

Janet had a lot to talk about, and she didn’t need much encouragement to keep going. She was deep in an analysis of the Great Siege of Malta as a turning point for the Ottoman Empire when a waiter came with their bill. While Janet calculated her share, Karolina took the opportunity to change the subject. What had Janet liked about their tour today?

“Eh, the graves were interesting. What about you?” 

“The lower level, I guess.” 

Janet’s brow wrinkled. “We weren’t allowed down there. It’s closed for conservation.”

“I must have meant the middle level,” said Karolina, and controlled her breathing while Janet launched into a description of all the forts she planned to visit.

* * *

Another night of uneasy dreams. The swallowing rock, the hand at her throat.

When Karolina checked, the finger bone was right where she’d stashed it: in the drawer of her bedside table, wrapped in a cloth. No matter how she wiped the bone, it was always dusty.

* * *

On Sunday, she took a bus to the sinkhole, the Maqluba. The site was kept like a park and visitors were allowed. The two old chapels stood in fair condition, but they were closed; a parish church up the road was open for mid-morning Mass. A few empty cars were parked nearby, and a pedestrian crossed to the far street.

Karolina walked all the way down to the bottom of the pit. Short walk, small pit. The sinkhole’s rocky walls were striated red and white, contrasting with the gray boulders scattered across the bottom. The place was thick with vegetation. Lush weeds and mosses dotted the path downward, which went dark and narrow in places. Tiny yellow flowers stuck out of cracks in the stone. Occasionally, a bird called.

It was a warm gray afternoon, and the light burst through in shreds. A cloud blocked the sun. Karolina, in the shadow at the bottom of the pit, felt dread settle over her. The phantom hand smoothed it onto her shoulders, like a shop attendant fitting a jacket. Her chest tightened—

There was a seam in the rock wall. A passageway. The darkness inside looked close and welcoming. With the inevitable momentum of a dream, Karolina moved toward it. Her hand fit in the crack. Then her arm, her shoulder, her side. She wiggled and shimmied until she was enclosed, only her far hand sticking out of the rock.

It ought to have felt strange, but it didn’t. It felt right.

Again that sensation of being held. The stone was damp and hot, like the breath of a livestock animal. _The living rock,_ she thought. It felt like they could communicate, if only she could figure out how. The stone could sit silent for years and years, and it wouldn’t speak a word unless Karolina spoke one first.

Her breath was too loud in the tight space. Rough stone squeezed her from either side, catching her stomach as she inhaled and her back as she breathed out. Or was it her back as she inhaled, and her stomach as she breathed out? She couldn’t tell anymore. She wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

She reached for that sense of peace, found panic instead. The stone gripped her harder, slippery and implacable, clenching around her like a muscle or a fist. She opened her mouth to scream, tasted rock—

* * *

“Miss? Are you okay?”

Karolina blinked awake. She lay on her back on the earth. The shadows around her said it was late afternoon. Some kid stood over her, a boy in his teens. A resident of the area, probably. There were a couple of younger children with him. One had a skateboard, and the other had his phone out. 

“Uh, miss?” the kid said. She struggled until she could sit upright. The kid held out his hand, but she shook her head.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, raw. “I was just. I fell asleep.” She felt—oh god, she felt grit in the back of her throat. When she coughed, she could taste it, tinny and bitter. She put her hand to her face, touched her mouth and nose. Flakes of dried blood came away, slick with salty sweat.

She looked at the rock wall. There was no seam.

“Do you need a doctor?” said the kid, but she was already rising to her feet, shuffling away from the little group. They were just kids. They didn’t need this.

“Hey!” she heard one of them call. She strode up the path, not looking back.

* * *

Karolina went out drinking, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. The Maltese clubbing scene had slowed down significantly since the fall equinox, but it was easy enough to find a dark, quiet corner in a busy bar. 

She was a good-looking woman in her late twenties. Even haggard, exhausted, and covered in dirt, she tended to attract attention. But tonight it was like no one saw her. Undisturbed, she drank her way through one bottle of wine, then a second.

Though she felt her body begin to succumb to the drink, her mind stayed frustratingly alert. Karolina rarely overindulged to the point of sickness, but she was debating a third bottle up until the blackout hit.

Somehow, she found her way back to her room. It was dark when she awoke—heart pounding, throat sore, wine heavy on her tongue—and past dawn by the time she struggled back to sleep. Her dreams were vivid and disturbing. She dreamed of the groaning tunnel, the twisted carriage, the old man screaming and contorted in pain. There was a watcher in her dreams, sorrowful and half-aware. If she could turn her head, and in these dreams she never could, she thought she might recognize his gaze.

She woke again, mid-afternoon, to the sound of a knock on her door. She wound the sour-smelling blankets around herself and got up to answer. It was the bed and breakfast proprietor. Karolina, it seemed, had received some mail, addressed accurately down to the room number. If she was planning to stay in Malta longer, the proprietor recommended that she rent a PO box.

Karolina sat on the edge of her bed for a long time, looking at the letter. It was the same as usual: the same typeface and logo, the return address, her name handwritten in that cheerful looping style. At length she gathered the courage to open it. 

Inside was a blank note on Eberhart & Strauss letterhead and a map of the Underground. The station at Kings Cross Saint Pancras had been circled. Someone had drawn an extra route branching from the Victoria line, and had starred several points around the end.

Disbelief overtook her, followed by rage. She threw the letter to the floor and went to take a shower.

* * *

Flights to London were sold out until Wednesday. Karolina considered going out drinking again, but her head and stomach protested at even the thought of alcohol. Probably for the best. She saw a movie instead and had a late dinner by herself. Might as well get some enjoyment out of this wild goose chase of a holiday.

She was feeling much better on Tuesday, so she went to walk around a neighboring city. There were a lot of lovely old buildings and churches. On a whim, she ducked into a museum, and resisted visiting the attached Roman catacombs with only some reluctance. Instead, she looked at art, antiques, and relics. There was a reliquary bust of St. Matthew the Evangelist; a portable altar that had been used during sea voyages by the Knights of St. John; and an especially handsome ebony cabinet with workings of ivory, which she spent perhaps too much time admiring. 

She left the museum with the beginnings of an appetite and decided to sate it at a convenience store. She was debating between drink flavors when someone yelled in horror. There was a special bulletin on the news.

Apparently a young woman had gone mad and attacked people at a tourist attraction. There were no deaths so far, but she had fled into some tunnels when pursued. The attraction was an old fort, notable for its strategic military value throughout Maltese history. Karolina was unsurprised, and then surprised at her lack of surprise, to recognize the grainy TV capture as Janet.

She bought her drink—just a drink, her appetite had fled—and drained it methodically as she walked back to the museum. It was still open. They must not have heard yet.

Her hand went to her pocket. Her knife was there, and the cloth-wrapped bone. She paused a moment, and then she crossed the threshold.

* * *

Karolina was lost, again. The tunnels through which she trudged no longer resembled the route in her museum map. There had been statues, plaques, and barren tombs, but now she saw rough walls and scattered bones, layers of dirt over everything speaking to years of neglect. The temperature had increased, as had the humidity. She was starting to sweat. 

She passed the same cobwebbed alcove a few times before she noticed the skeleton. It was… well, it was cartoonish, honestly. A near complete human skeleton, set into the wall like a mosaic.

It was missing a finger bone. 

Fitting her bone to the dug-out space took some finagling, but she managed. Nothing happened. She stepped back to survey the wall, looked more closely, ran her hands over the rough surface in search of anything strange. She even touched the skeleton: the arm, the hand, the many little finger joints. Nothing.

“I don’t know what I expected from you,” she told the skull. Its hollow sockets gazed back at her, crusted with dirt that might have predated London. The catacombs themselves dated back to the third century CE at the oldest, but this part of the tunnels felt much older.

Her contemplation was interrupted by the sound of someone swearing loudly. She peered out into the corridor in time to see Janet, kicking at a tangle of bones as she rounded the corner. She launched a femur so viciously it bounced against the wall, and ranted half-coherently while she walked.

Janet looked a fright. She was dirty and bedraggled, her hair a sweat-caked mess around her face. In one hand she bore a curious dagger, whose history was no doubt grisly and obscure. She held a big piece of cardboard in the other hand like a shield.

Karolina tried to conceal herself as Janet passed, but it was too late. 

“You!” Janet stopped in her tracks. She brought her cardboard shield up defensively and pointed her dagger at Karolina, an accusation.

Karolina thought over her next words, opening her mouth to reply, but Janet cut in before she could start. “You think I don’t know how you laugh at me? How all of you laugh at me?”

“But I’ve got the power now,” she continued, dropping the shield. She ventured closer, backing Karolina toward the skeleton. Her eyes were red-rimmed and unseeing. “I’ve been chosen.”

Janet continued to rant, speaking of the months of sleep she’d lost to nightmares after competing in a strange roleplay tournament. The concern of her family and the departure of her few remaining friends. The tinnitus; the brief, inexplicable fugues; and the episodes of frenzy whose cause no doctor could expound. 

Janet's trip had been meant as a way to relax, but it hadn't worked. She described the music she'd heard upon first arriving in Malta, maddening yet somehow familiar. The music had changed when she took up the dagger, ripening from hazy radio static to a strong, sweet tune. Her fate was clear now. She would lead the armies of the world to converge on a final, perfect battlefield, and wash the world in oceans of gore.

Karolina had edged out of stabbing range while Janet talked, fighting to keep her eyebrows down as her hand inched toward her knife. She just had to wait for the right moment. 

“Basically, you’ll all be sorry,” said Janet. “Wait, what are you doing?”

Karolina slashed at her. Janet dodged, then caught Karolina's arm and made her fling the knife away. She pressed Karolina backwards and held her against the wall with one skinny arm. She was intolerably strong.

Somewhere far off, there was music. Drum-beats, piping. An unsophisticated rhythm, but violence didn’t require art to fuel it. 

“Please,” said Karolina, scrabbling at the wall. Bits of ancient limestone came off in her nails. Janet frowned, then realized Karolina wasn’t talking to her. She looked around the room, looked at Karolina, and laughed.

“Who are you talking to? I don’t think they’re listening.” She smirked, pressing her forearm harder into Karolina’s windpipe. “Ironic, huh.”

"Please," Karolina wheezed, convulsing as Janet thrust the dagger into her torso. Janet stabbed her again and again, laughing and saying things she could no longer make out. 

Blood flooded her mouth, dribbling onto Janet's clothes, and she couldn’t speak. She felt her eyes roll back in her head. Her body was buzzing with fear and distant, abstracted pain. She had never been in this much pain. She couldn’t even feel it.

 _Please,_ she mouthed again with her remaining strength. She reached past shock and panic, even past peace, and found a deep, mute certainty.

It came into her head like it had always been there. Perhaps it had. Perhaps she had known all along what was happening, and had merely concealed it from her conscious self. An innocent person wouldn’t have answered those letters or followed their instructions. An ignorant person wouldn’t have kept the bone. And no sane human being would have gone into the tunnels, after everything she’d been through this year.

The facts of it were: She and Janet had been sent here to test each other. Whatever beings plagued them, gods or demons or things less knowable, were interested in seeing how they matched. Karolina had mis-stepped; Janet had won the fight, for the moment at least. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how strong either of them were, or what they wanted, or even what they did, so much as _where they were._

There was a low rumbling sound. A drizzle of dry earth.

The ceiling groaned, and cracked.

Karolina opened her eyes and met Janet’s, finding human terror beneath the haze of bloodlust. Terror, and dawning betrayal. For all she had sacrificed, for all she had endured, Janet’s god would not save her.

“I’m sorry,” Karolina forced out, just as the tunnel caved in.

* * *

The overnight shift guarding the catacombs at Salina, Malta was typically a quiet affair. Events of the prior day notwithstanding, this night had progressed much as usual. Stars sat solid in a shifting sky. Sea-air drifted on the breeze, mingling with the sound of waves from a local bay. The security guard thought longingly of his bed.

Suddenly there came a noise from the tunnels. It was a noise he had not heard before. 

The noise came again, and then the earth moved. 

In the confusion that followed, he did not lose his gun or his flashlight. When the shaking stopped, a figure emerged from the catacombs, and he ran to intercept them.

“What happened?” he demanded, shining the light in their face. It was an attractive young woman, covered in blood and dirt. She was panting heavily and seemed disoriented.

“The tunnel collapsed. There was a girl with me, she’s still in there, I don’t know…”

He tried to call Emergency Services, but there was no signal. It hadn’t felt like a big earthquake, but who knew. He sent a hurried text to a colleague instead. “Just try to calm down. Someone will get here soon.”

“I feel terrible,” said the woman haltingly. “She… Look, I’ve got to go back.” She turned toward the tunnels.

“No!” He grabbed her arm, and she twisted hard out of his grip. “It’s dangerous. The emergency responders will take care of her when they arrive.”

“I’m going back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, come on.”

She was already walking away.

“Don’t do this. You’re probably concussed, you’ll just hurt yourself, and there might be aftershocks.” He tried to get hold of her arm again, but she just shrugged him off. He tried a placating tone. “At least let me come with you, to check if it’s safe.”

She looked at him. Her face didn’t change expression, but something unnerving glinted behind her eyes.

“If you insist,” she said.

* * *

As it turned out, Karolina couldn’t fly anymore. She tried, but her body wouldn’t let her board the plane. That was a hassle. She decided not to take her chances on whether the tunnels in Malta really led to Rome. She had to take the ferry to Sicily, and a series of trains back to London—which was a nice way to see Italy, at least.

She ate four more people during the journey: one in the port at Villa San Giovanni after they got off the train ferry; two during a layover in Rome (she was hungry); and the last on the way through the Chunnel, though she had been taunting him since they crossed the French border. While she might once have felt guilty or horrified about these actions, she now found it difficult to tamp down her giddiness. It felt _good,_ being the one to cause fear instead of feel it. Besides, if any of them were really worthy of escaping, they’d have found their way out as she had.

It was a damp, chilly afternoon when she finally returned to London. She opened the door to her flat and was greeted by a shower of dirt from the hinge. Dust covered the furniture, thickly caked in some areas and just traces in others. She trailed her fingers over the back of the couch, intrigued by the lines they made in the velvety sheet there. Her shoes left clear prints in the silt coating the hallway. Her heart swelled with affection at finding the deep dust flurries across her bed. It felt like someone had been preparing the place for her arrival. 

However, it was just a welcome, not a homecoming. Karolina might sleep here, might perform the motions of human life in this place, but her true home lay elsewhere. She drew the Underground map from her pocket and smoothed it out, lingering over the drawn-in branch from the Victoria line. She could already picture her descent: the packed carriage, the squealing metal, the transcendent rush of fear as the crowd around her realized their peril. The tranquility she would brush there, caressed by earth on every side, before she was called back to the surface to hunt again.

It was true that some matters were best left undisturbed. But the thing she had found wasn’t one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Locations featured here include the [National Library](https://maltalibraries.gov.mt/iguana/www.main.cls?p=788374c8-8d6d-44d6-bd24-eb7a87b79d2c&v=c1442d12-1cf8-4fec-992e-34c2dcdafb03), the [Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum](https://heritagemalta.org/hal-saflieni-hypogeum/), [Il-Maqluba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maqluba_\(Malta\)), [Fort St. Angelo](https://heritagemalta.org/fort-st-angelo/), the [Wignacourt Museum](http://www.wignacourtmuseum.com), and the [Salina Catacombs](https://leslievella.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/the-roman-catacombs-of-salina/). See [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/20/malta-secret-tunnels-inside-newly-discovered-underworld-valletta) for further reading about the tunnels. I have never been to Malta, and I apologize for the liberties taken and inaccuracies no doubt conveyed in this story.
> 
> Check out the [European Music Archaeology Project](http://www.emaproject.eu/content/audio/hypogeum-of-hal-saflieni.html) for some recordings from the Oracle Room.
> 
> ETA: Eberhart & Strauss is the financial firm from Episode 129, "[Submerged](https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/129.html)."


End file.
